BEGINNINGS OF RESOLUTION: LIMITATION

Two sets of major factors have played an outstanding role in the limitation of the scope of violence and development of the military conflict resolution strategy. One is associated with the pressure of the interna­tional environment which included, first of all, the attitudes of the superpowers but also the role of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the positions of individual nations, the interference of the Church and of numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

There is a certain relationship between the birth, evolution and the end of any conflict. And from this point of view, it is appropriate and important to identify which decisions have produced the conflict and have led to its development. It may also help to understand why and how it lives and how it can be ended. As a classical example, some historians mention Barbara Tuchman's “Guns of August” at the beginning of WWI, in which she has given one of the best historical analyses of the interconnection between the decisions of the rivaling nations which lead in the long run to the outburst of the world crisis.

So, the problem of a resolution strategy is to understand which decisions, when and why, have played the role of a trigger and whether they can be reversed or changed or dismissed in order to redraft the path of the evolution of the military conflict. And the limitation of the conflict plays a certain role here because it reduces the intensity of the confrontation and thus gives a bigger chance to the factors which may contribute to the peaceful resolution of the conflict. Since a military conflict (and confrontation) is a case where the use of organized violence is the leading feature, it is understandable that it begins when, due to different reasons, non-violent evolution of a conflict is considered irrelevant and a military action preferable. The state of the military capabilities and the hope for a victory, rather than justice and aspiration of a rational winning strategy, decide the outcome of the conflict: “when the cannons speak, the truth is silent” (Parsons, 2007). Both in the cases of “hot” and “cold” wars, the ability to use weapons is the major and practically the only factor which decides the evolution and the end of the conflict.

This simple and evident fact leaves at the same time an open and bleeding question as to whether this is the best possible solution and how long it will live. Evidently, the imposed solution may not be the best (as, for example, the enforced marriage can never bring happiness) and what will happen when the other side acquires more power (as did Russia under Putin)? The human experience has identified some cases when only a military solution is relevant, for example, in dealing with the dictatorial regimes (and from this point of view, President Bush's argument in favor of the attack of Saddam's Iraq because it was “a bloody dictatorship” has received a vast support) (Kremenyuk, 2004). But in many other cases, this is not so evident and that gives legitimate grounds for strong doubts and opposition to the use of force.

In the current conditions, something impor­tant has changed which gives us a chance to answer the hard questions on the relevance of coercion. First, the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and USA has produced legitimate aspirations of a similar peaceful end to other military conflicts and confrontations. Second, the ability of the two superpowers to overcome their differences (which at times seemed so important that their governments were ready to use all their arsenals to defend them) was regarded as their ability to enforce peaceful solu­tions on other conflicts, such as Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Korea, India-Pakistan, Taiwan, Arab states-Israel, Cyprus, Bosnia and others. The growing attractiveness of non-violent solutions has changed significantly the whole attitude to the use of force as a political weapon. Suffice it to say that almost every government now has to develop a special argument in favor of the use of force once it decides to do it. Though the right to use force for the purposes of self defense is recognized by the UN Charter, still the nations are expected to give a profound explanation of their conflict behavior (something which was completely ignored by the US administration in the case of its attack on Iraq).

Two different views have been borne as a result. One concerned the centuries-old principle of the cost-benefit analysis of the use of force in a conflict. The spread of the WMD has introduced a totally new element into the understanding of this principle: use the threat of force as a tool of conflict management but don't use force as such because it is too destructive (George, 1971). And the desire by some nations to acquire WMD reveals that they see in this weapon the possibility of intimidating possible aggressors through the increase of the price of the use of power.

It would be naive to expect that, once such conclusions were achieved, the force structures which existed for centuries and the whole historical tradition which was born because of the typical conduct of the nations will be immediately changed. Ideas of peaceful, non-violent solution of conflicts and confrontations only reflected the fact that very strong doubts have appeared about the efficiency of violent solutions and of the necessity to introduce strong limitations to the use of force. The traditional anti-war and anti-militaristic position of those who always protested against the use of force was rather unexpectedly supported by the rational cold­blooded analysis of the consequences of the use of weapons in the current conditions. The adherents of the use of military force did not capitulate, though they had to take a defensive position. Instead, they suggested different means to circumvent the factor of the nuclear stalemate: “limited” wars, “low intensity” conflicts, “special” wars, wars “by proxy” and the like.